Business profile: Conran is gone, long live Conran

Harry Wallop talks to the man who has taken over from the visionary London restaurateur

There is a bounce to Des Gunewardena's step. After being Sir Terence Conran's right-hand man for 17 years he has finally got his hands on the family silver, or at least the cutlery.

Gunewardena has not only taken over the chairmanship of Sir Terence's eponymous restaurant group, he and his management team now own nearly a third of the company. Sir Terence owns 51pc but has relinquished all managerial control.

"It was fun before, we had a good time. Terence and I still see each other. But it feels like a younger company, a new company. There's an energy about the place."

He's right. We're sitting in one of the 18 London Conran restaurants and despite it being at the tail-end of lunch, the place is buzzing. Well-fed City types show no sign of finishing their coffees and brandies. According to Gunewardena, in the past two months, trading has been up 13pc on a year ago.

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"Without any doubt at all there is a real feelgood factor in the City. Everybody thinks bonuses are going to be very high this year. There is a lot of confidence generally in London, there are more tourists. The London economy seems very robust."

He pulls off the rare trick of looking pleased without being smug as he contemplates his new empire.

While Sir Terence fulfilled all the cliches of successful restaurateur – expanding waistline, large cigar – Gunewardena is cut from a different cloth.

He is surprisingly svelte despite dining in his restaurants about three times a week. He puts it down to tennis and not drinking at lunch.

He is an accountant by training and was for years dubbed Sir Terence's bean counter.

Those who know him say this was far from the truth, arguing he was frequently the driving force behind the business. "I've never really been a bean counter. Most people who do business with us know what I do. I've really been the dealmaker," he says.

He admits he has been "incredibly lucky" at ending up in the restaurant industry.

His first job after leaving accountancy firm Ernst & Young was working for Gerald Ronson. "I was in my 20s and it was a fantastically exciting time. It was, I think, the largest private company in Europe and it was doing amazing things, buying skyscrapers in Manhattan and banks in Arizona. Ronson was a fantastic businessman and a fabulous dealmaker."

Gunewardena left before Ronson became embroiled in the Guinness insider dealing scandal. But by then he had got the taste for working for fast-moving private, entrepreneur-led companies.

When Conran came knocking on his door in 1989, suggesting opening some restaurants in an economic slump, Gunewardena was intrigued.

He joined as finance director and has never left. "I was at the start of the restaurant revolution in London. There were not really any exciting restaurants in London in 1990 compared to the large number there are now.

"Quaglino's, which was Terence's move really, was an incredibly bold, ballsy move – to take 15,000 sq ft in the teeth of the recession."

Though the company has just 21 restaurants, Sir Terence's importance should not be underestimated, Gunerwardena argues. "Terence is a terrific visionary. He has done more for the quality of everybody's life in the last 20 years than almost anyone else."

That might be pushing it a little, but there is no doubt that in the time the company has dominated the dining scene in London, the quality of food has improved, service has become more professional and design sleeker across the capital.

"I think it's true to say it punches above its weight in terms of influence. A lot of people have eaten in our restaurants and have heard of us and yet we're just a £60m turnover business," he says.

Some critics argue, however, that while the restaurants are good, they are all a bit homogenised – chunky ash trays, crisp white table cloths, humourless waiters and well executed but unimaginative French food.

"I'd be really, really, really upset if anyone who really knew our restaurants said that. If you went into Floridita, Cantina del Ponte, and Coq d'Argent you couldn't have three more different restaurants," he says.

And now Gunerwardena is in charge there will be a lot more of them, with the empire soon stretching across the other side of the world. Six restaurants are being opened over the next year, with three in a waterside development in Copenhagen being launched next week. Tokyo follows next year.

Is he interested in becoming a major force in Asia? "Absolutely." Shanghai, Mumbai, Hong Kong are all on the menu. "I don't have a map of the world saying we want to be there, there and there. That's not how we work. We wait for interesting opportunities. It's difficult to be successful in a city you don't know."

A brasserie in the country of his birth, Sri Lanka, is unlikely, however. He arrived in London at the age of seven, when his father, a successful civil engineer, decided England held better prospects than Colombo. Since then, apart from when he was a student, he has always lived in Wimbledon.

While overseas restaurants are exciting, the UK remains his focus, especially London with its thousands of wealthy diners.

"London is booming. It is a huge, fantastic city and it is growing."

Isn't there a risk that Conran could become too big? "We haven't got 200 restaurants. We aren't Tesco dominating the restaurant scene."

It certainly isn't. But there's no denying the company's success has, like Tesco, made its shareholders very wealthy and looks like doing so for some time.

Gunewardena picked up a dividend of £1m last year, and a further £1.75m from the management buyout deal in September.

However, further payouts are unlikely in the near future while the company invests in new restaurants. It all sounds suspiciously like a company readying itself for a float on the stock market, doesn't it?

"I can't remember a month, let alone a year, since 1991 when someone hasn't asked me when we're going to float the company. I've always worked in private companies and I'm very comfortable with that structure. You and your shareholders can move very fast.

Having said that, I think it would be crazy to rule out for ever a flotation of the company, especially as we now have a financial shareholder in HBOS who owns 18pc of the company."

With that Gunewardena downs his coffee, bounces out of his chair, and heads back to his new office – leaving many happy diners tucking into their food.